1. Building Your Business With Your Website

3. Tripled online sales for a catalog retailer.

4. Improved search results for local businesses – including moving a dog trainer to top of Google search.

5. One-stop website shop – design, writing, programming, hosting, SEO and marketing.

6. Developed diverse sites for life coaching, restaurants, non-profits, dog trainer, car dealer, tool maker, law firms, and many more.

8. It's relatively inexpensive promotion compared to advertising and print material.

9. Holiday online sales - $25 billion.

10. Your competitors have a website.

12. What can I do here?

13. Why should I stay? (Source: MarketingExperiments.com)

15. Restaurant hours were placed in header. They were not on the original site.

16. Link to Facebook page for updates added.

17. Catering and Happy Hour Specials added

19. How much Flash does it have?

20. How pretty are the pictures?

21. Keep it simple and relevant to your business.

23. DO select a .com name if at all possible. (I know I broke this rule.)

24. DO select a good hosting service to register through. Transferring takes time.

25. DON'T pay more than $10 for .com unless absolutely necessary.

27. Middle content: Value proposition – Clear quantifiable statement of what differentiates you from your competitors. Not a tag line!

28. Navigation: Top and/or left.

29. Right: Call to action, specials, newsletter subscriptions.

31. Value proposition emphasized in home page copy.

32. Navigation at top and side.

33. Specials on right. When we re-designed for ironheartdogs.com, we worked on areas of focus:

35. Don't choose on price alone. A free website your nephew built is going to look exactly like that.

36. Look for someone who can offer a range of services, either in-house or with partners.

38. Starter/brochure websites can cost $1000-$3000 at a marketing or design firm.

39. Extra functionality – shopping carts, content management, will add to the price.

40. There are more affordable website design firms – so shop around. Ask WebsiteMakeovers.net for an estimate.

41. Website Makeovers designed womenswoods.net for under $600

44. You have special requests – like content management, shopping cart, and so forth – that need more support.

45. Technical support is included in the fee.

46. They are an effective partner for your business.

48. Get an expert and be prepared to put money into testing.

50. Yahoo if you want to be thorough

51. So be wary of companies that want to sell you submission to 1000 search engines. Weigh the cost-benefit.

53. Probably not, if you have a brochure site or highly targeted audience.

54. Yes, needs SEO: techforumtrends.com wanted to be prominent in certain information security markets to draw conference business. No, doesn't need SEO: pilatescross.com was designed for local author who wanted a site to promote book to agents and publishers he contacted directly.

56. How active are you? - Google loves sites that are updated frequently.

57. How popular are you? - Google loves lots of links to your site. Get links back from relevant directories.

58. But don't cheat! - Google bans cheaters.

59. Be patient. It takes time. It can take months.

61. Be relevant! - Don't drive people to your site with “Paris Hilton” if you are selling chainsaws

62. Use these key phrases in 3-4% of your content and in titles, links, bolded copy.

64. Used key words throughout content, especially in emphasized text.

65. Implemented a photo gallery with text that was updated often with new content.

66. Added links back from specific directories. We improved search results for ironheartdogs.com to the top of the first page. Originally they weren't even in the top 100 for their targeted key words.

68. Hosting Services – We prefer Hostmonster

69. Google Webmaster Tools – Includes free traffic analysis, key word tools, site map tools

70. Shopping Carts – Leverage Yahoo, Google, ebay

72. Blogging – Your own blog – but keep it updated! - or comment on other blogs

73. Social Media – LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, etc.